Doubting God's Love

The book of Malachi is full of warnings that seem harsh at first, but actually are filled with God's loving concern to pull His people back from the edge of danger. They had grown tired of waiting for God's promises, falling into a spiritual rut.

They were doing the right things, but their hearts were not in it. There are six disputes outlined in Malachi. Today we explore the first dispute between Israel and God. In the opening verses from Malachi 1, we find weighty concerns and weary hearts.

All of this led to the people doubting God's love. From Chicago, welcome to The Moody Church Hour with Pastor Philip Miller. In a moment, a time of worship and teaching as we begin a series on tough love and tender mercies taken from the book of Malachi. Here now is Pastor Philip, along with worship leader Tim Stafford. Good morning, Moody Church. It's good to see all of you. Hey, we're excited. We're going to begin a new series in the book of Malachi in the Old Testament.

It's an often overlooked book with some really important truths for our lives. And so I'm looking forward to that. Would you stand as we begin this service and give this time to the Lord? Would you bow your heads and pray with me? Heavenly Father, we gather here this morning as your people called by your name, saved by your grace for your glory. And Father, we want to give you the praise and honor that you deserve, that you desire, that you demand. And so Father, as we lift our voices and give you our hearts, we want to hold nothing back this morning.

We want to give you an offering of all that we are, for you are worthy of our lives. And we give you praise in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, amen, amen. Imagine all generations, a thousand generations before the throne. Praise the Lord. A thousand generations falling down in worship to sing the song of ages to the man.

And all who've gone before us and all who will believe will sing the song of ages to the man. Your name is the highest. Your name is the greatest. Your name stands above them all.

All thrones and dominions, all powers and positions. Your name stands above them all. And the angels of God, holy, all creation rise. Holy, you are lifted high.

Holy, holy forever. Your name is the highest. Your name is the greatest. Your name stands above them all.

All thrones and dominions, all powers and positions. Your name stands above them all. And the angels of God, holy, all creation rise. Your name is the highest.

Your name stands above them all. Holy, holy forever. It's a privilege, it's a pleasure to praise your name today and to think with this congregation how for eternity future we'll continue to praise your holy name.

Thank you. We bless you. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Praise the Lord, my soul. And forget not all which read this. Praise the Lord, my soul. And forget not all which read this. Praise the Lord, my soul. And forget not all which read this.

Praise the Lord, my soul. And forget not all which read this. And forget not all which read this.

Praise the Lord, my soul. And forget not all which read this. And forget not all which read this. Praise the Lord, my soul. And forget not all which read this. Praise the Lord. And forget not all which read this. Praise the Lord, my soul.

And forget not all which read this. Peace in my soul. The Lord is on my side. There they shall be, the cross they'll bring, O they. Give to thy God, to order and provide. In every change, be faithful with me. Be still, my soul, thy best, thy heavenly friend. Through the morning waves, be still, thy joyful friend. Be still, my soul, thy God of thunderday.

To guide the future as he hands the past. I hope thy compass can find its shape. Although his secrets shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul, the waves that ring. Still know his voice to rule wherever he dwells alone. Be still, my soul, the hour is resting alone. Where we shall be forever in the Lord.

When his abode, begging, and fear are gone. Sorrow for God, thus pure is shown. Be still, my soul, and change and tears are there.

I'll say that once they shall be in the Lord. Sweet, O Lord, as we come to you, to receive you through your holy word. Sing your truth, plant it deep in us.

Shape and fashion us in your kindness. Let the light of Christ find me. Sing today in a rest of love and a peace of grace. O Lord, thank you, live in us, for your purposes, for your holy name. Teach us, Lord, for the radiance, holy reverence, to live in us. Test our thoughts and our attitudes in the radiance of your beauty. Test our pain to rise, cause our lives to see, your majestic love and your glory. Loose of heart that can never fail, let their truth prevail over all. Sweet, O Lord, and renew our minds.

Help us cross the ice of your plans for us. Truths are changed from that old time that we led, put out to eternity. And thy grace will stand on your promises, and thy faith will walk as you walk with us. Sing, O Lord, till your church is filled, and the earth is filled with your glory. As we've experienced your majestic love, Lord, help us to learn to submit to your authority and hear from you what we need to do today to change our hearts.

In Jesus' name, Amen. When we were moving to Chicago a couple years ago, we knew that we would be living within walking distance of The Moody Church here, and so we decided to become a one-car city family. And so we sold both of our vehicles in Washington State, and we decided to hunt for a new vehicle when we got here to meet our needs here in Chicago. And I asked Krista, I said, what are some of the features that you would be dreaming about in a new vehicle?

And you know, I was thinking like heated seats or all-wheel drive or something like that. And she told me, she said this, I don't want there to be any of those little warning lights flashing on the dash. Like, and you have to understand, for most of our married life, we had had very used vehicles and the dash was lit up like a Christmas tree. And I grew up, there were always warning lights on the dash, on the vehicles we drove in our family. And so I just kind of learned to ignore them. I even sometimes took electrical tape and I put it right over the top so I wouldn't see it, because if you don't see it, it's not real, right? Those are just suggestion lights, right?

Right? Some of you are losing all respect. The little bit you had for me, you've lost it at this point. But anyway, those little lights were stressing Krista out all the time. It was like a little rebuke.

You're doing something wrong all the time. And she wanted, she wanted no lights. And so I'm pleased to report that, and I drove the vehicle yesterday, there's not one, not one warning light on, not even a tire pressure gauged light.

I'm so proud of myself. Anyway, the book of Malachi is in many ways like a series of warning lights on the dashboard of our spiritual lives. Malachi, that great Italian prophet from the Old Testament, he prophesied around 450 B.C. He's the very last of the Old Testament prophets.

After Malachi, it goes radio silent for 400 years. God doesn't give any word to his people for 400 years until Jesus shows up. So this is like God's final message to his people, his Old Testament people, Israel, before Messiah comes, okay?

And it's full of all these warnings. You see, the people of Israel had come back from exile. They had been exiled in Babylon. They came back. They had rebuilt Jerusalem. They reestablished the wall. They restored the temple. And they rededicated themselves to God with fervor.

They were ready for all the new covenant promises of God to come true right then, right there. But it didn't happen. Not the way they dreamed it would, at least. The temple turned out to be less glorious than they'd remembered. The city was less prosperous than they had planned.

The nation was less influential than they had aspired. And so their fervor for the Lord started to fade. Their faithfulness started to fluctuate. Their fidelity started to falter. And so we'll see in the book of Malachi, they started doubting that God loved them. They became careless in their worship. They grew indifferent to the truth. They started abandoning their covenants. They started skimping on their offerings to God. And the spiritual slide in their lives over the next 400 years will end up in what we know as Pharisaism. The Pharisees and their performative religion of doing everything right on the outside but their hearts being lost and wandering.

This is where it's going. Jesus will call out the Pharisees in Matthew 15, 18 and say, quoting the prophet Isaiah, that this people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They're saying the right words, practicing the right religion on the outside but their hearts aren't in it at all.

They've lost the heart of it all. And God, sensing the spiritual drift of the peril that they are heading into, sends them a word through the prophet Malachi. And the book of Malachi serves as a series of warning lights flashing in their faces, trying to grab their attention to get them to repent, to turn around, to pay attention to what matters and come home to God. In fact, the central theme of the book of Malachi is found in chapter 3 verse 7 where we read, return to me and I will return to you.

Return to me and I will return to you. And in amongst all of these warnings in the book of Malachi are woven some of the most beautiful promises in all of the Bible. So Malachi is both full of warnings and great warmth. It's full of tough love and tender mercies. And so as people, you and I, whose hearts are also prone to wander, yes, whose religions can too easily slip into performance where we end up going through the motions but lose the heart of it all. We need this message.

We need this tough love and these tender mercies. So grab your Bible. We're going to be in Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 to 5. Today, it's the very last book in the Old Testament.

As I read God's word, would you listen along? This is the word of the Lord. Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 to 5.

The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, how have you loved us? Is not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord?

Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. If Edom says we are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of hosts says they may build but I will tear down and they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. Thanks be to the Lord for the reading of his word. It's a slightly odd passage, isn't it?

Let's dig in here. Malachi structures this book around a series of disputes, six of them in total between God and the people as they argue back and forth over these points. This is the very first of the disputes in these first five verses. In these verses, we find a weighty concern, wary hearts, and wondrous love. Okay? Weighty concern, wary hearts, and wondrous love.

There's your outline. Let's pray and we'll jump in, alright? Let's pray. Father, we are often blind to our own spiritual condition.

Our heart's ability to self justify is endless and the doubts that plague our hearts are many. And Father, to the extent that we too doubt your love, would you remind us of how much you love us this morning? We cry out to you in Christ's name. Amen.

Amen. So first of all, a weighty concern. A weighty concern, Malachi whose Hebrew name means my messenger, begins this prophecy with these words in verse one, an oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. Now the word translated oracle here in Hebrew literally means burden, a burden, like a heavy weighty load, a burden. This is the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. These are weighty words from a heavy heart that is caring for the souls of his people. Malachi feels the weight of the responsibility of bringing this word to his people. The concern of their souls lays heavily upon his heart. He senses their spiritual peril and he is burdened for their souls. And so God now gives, the Lord God gives Malachi a word for his people, a word that is not to be taken lightly, for it is the word of the Lord.

And you'll notice it is capital L-O-R-D. This is Yahweh, the covenant keeping name of God. He is speaking to his covenant people and the word of the Lord weighs heavily on Malachi. He longs to see a spiritual breakthrough in the lives of his people that somehow this word would penetrate their jaded hearts and that they would turn back to God and that this heavy weight would have its effect. Friends, the care of souls is a heavy burden.

You know that? The care of souls is a heavy burden. I'm reminded how the apostle Paul, like Malachi, describes his daily caring of the burden of all the churches, the cares and concerns of the churches.

That's in 2 Corinthians 11, 28. Souls don't weigh an ounce, do they? And yet carrying them is the greatest weight in the world. Ask any pastor, any minister, any prayer warrior, any parent, any guardian, any grandparent, the care of souls is a heavy burden. Aren't you grateful, friends, for those who have loved you enough to burden themselves with the care of your soul? Aren't you grateful, aren't you thankful for people who have loved you enough to speak heavy truths into your life? Aren't you blessed by those who faithfully bring the weightiness of the word of the Lord to bear upon your soul?

Aren't you grateful? We desperately need people like Malachi who will faithfully bring the burden of the word of the Lord to his people, whose souls weigh upon his life, his heart. It's a weighty concern. That's where it begins.

And his weighty concern is about their weary hearts, their weary hearts. Verse 2a, right there. I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, how have you loved us? Now, remember, this is a dispute. It's an argument.

So they're going back and forth. God's assertion, his opening assertion here, is I have loved you, right? And the word is chesed, covenant, faithful, loyal, love. I have loved you. I've been faithful to the covenant. I've made a covenant and I've kept it with you. And they go, Israel's rebuttal is how?

How? How dare you say that word, you love me? I don't think that word means what you think it means, the way you've treated us. It's dismissive. It's discounting. It's doubting. How can you say you love us, God?

You call this love? I mean, look what all we've been through, God. You chose Father Abraham and you gave him all these promises. And then he just wanders around for years and years. And then we end up as slaves for centuries in Egypt.

And then you let us out and we finally wander around in the desert summer. And then we finally get our own land and then we're just overrun by enemies. And we had got a king finally and they were fine at first, but then they fell into disarray and we couldn't count on them. And we ended up in exile for years and years and years. And now we're finally back in the land, but it's turned out to be a big disappointment.

The temple is small. The city is impoverished. The nation is frail. And all your promises, so-called, they keep taking forever and forever. When will the curse be lifted? When will Messiah, whoever he is, show up? How about that kingdom you keep promising?

What about that new covenant? How about when everything gets made new? When is that gonna happen, God? Really, we're waiting. We're doing everything you've told us to do. And we're still waiting, waiting, still waiting, always waiting on your promises. You say you love us.

How is this love? You see what they're doing? They're doubting God's love. They're skeptical that he really is for them. They're holding back in self-protection and they're wary of entrusting their hearts to God because, friends, our hearts often grow wary in the waiting.

Don't they? Our hearts often grow wary in the waiting when the life we dreamed of fails to materialize, when God's promises are really slow in coming true, when hard stuff blindsides us, when the healing we pray for doesn't come, when our enemies seem to be winning at every turn, when hope feels so out of reach and we feel so very stuck and we don't have a line of sight, when we're waiting and waiting, always waiting. It's so easy to grow weary, friends. It's so easy to doubt his goodness. It's so easy to doubt his power. It's so easy to doubt his love. Have you been there?

I have. Sometimes life can feel so dark and so confusing and so hopeless that we begin to wonder if God really does love us after all. You see why Malachi had such a weighty concern for their wary hearts?

It weighed upon him. He wanted more than anything to get through to them, which is why he now reminds them of God's wondrous love, God's wondrous love. Look at how God responds here to their wary hearts, their honest, very honest doubting of his love, right?

This is very straightforward. Look at what God says in response 2B. It's not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord, yet I've loved Jacob and Esau I've hated.

This is a somewhat odd and unexpected response, but it's purposeful. Malachi wants you to ponder here. God wants you to ponder what he said. He takes the people back to Genesis 25 and the story of Jacob and Esau. These are the twin brothers born to Isaac and Rebekah, you'll recall. You have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

These are the grandchildren, the twin boy grandchildren of father Abraham. And even though Esau was the first born son, and according to the ancient Near Eastern customs, should have been the primogenitor, that is the heir and leader of the family, God chose Jacob, the younger brother, instead to be the heir through whom the covenant promises of God would unfurl. And so the promise that God gave to Abraham and Isaac, he gives not to Esau, but to Jacob unexpectedly. Not because Jacob was better or nicer or taller or smarter or because he had his act together. No, he didn't.

Go read the story. But because God in sovereign love chose him. That's what made the difference, which is the essential meaning of this phrase, I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.

It sounds harsh to our ears, but it was a common Hebraic way of expressing chosen loyalties. You'll see it in Jesus' own language in Luke 14, 26, when he says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. He's not calling us to hate people or to hate family members. He's calling us to such loyal devotion and love of him that all our other allegiances look like hate in comparison.

That's what he's saying. To love the one is to hate the other. It's a Hebraic way of expressing chosen loyalties. We do something like this, my kids do, when they tell their mom, you know, mom, you're the best mom in the world, right? That's not a diss on all other mothers, right? They're just saying, we choose you, mom, you're the best, right?

That's what that means. It's not about the other mothers, it's about the chosen loyalty of our mom. And so God is reminding his people Israel here, who are descendants of Jacob, not Esau, descendants of Jacob, they are Israel, that he chose them in love.

He says, look, I know you doubt my love, and I know you've had a rough go of things. Life has not been easy for you as my chosen people. But I want you for a moment to imagine what it would be like to be unchosen, to be Esau's descendants, not Jacob's. Look at verse 3b.

I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. Esau's descendants were a people known as the Edomites, the Edomites. They lived in a region south and east of Israel, across the great rift of the Jordan Valley, south of the Dead Sea, in a region that was at one time heavily wooded and well watered. And even though God forbid that Israel ever fight with the Edomites because they were cousin nations, they were family, the Edomites were constantly provoking and causing trouble for Israel.

For example, three quick highlights, and there's a bunch we could choose from. They refused to give Israel passage when they were coming out of slavery in Egypt to the promised land. They made them go all the way around in the desert rather than take the shortcut right through their land. They attacked Israel multiple times, and they formed allegiances with nations that were oppressive of Israel, and then they cheered Israel's destruction at the hands of the Babylonians when they were hauled off into exile. They cheered and said, yay!

Look, this is not a good attitude. So God pronounced judgment on Edom through the prophet Obadiah, and they were driven from their land first by the Persians, and then later by the Nabataeans, and they never returned to their land. It was left desolate. They became, eventually, a group of people called the Edomians.

You'll remember that Herod the Great was an Edomian, and he's the one who tried to kill baby Jesus, and by 70 AD, even the Edomians were wiped out from the face of the planet. And so here you have a people that are under the discipline of the Lord and will go ultimately into extinction. And God says, look, this could have been your fate, Israel, had I chosen one brother instead of the other, had I chosen the older instead of the younger, but I chose you. I chose you, and I brought you into a very different existence. I brought you into land flowing with milk and honey. I strove with you in battle. I defended you against your enemies. I preserved you time and time again, even down to this very day. You are still my people. You are still called by my name. Your continued existence is grace.

It is proof of my enduring faithfulness and love for you. Don't you see? And he continues, verse 4, if Edom says we are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of hosts says they may build, but I will tear down. And they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. God says, look, Edom has no hope.

They have no future. They have no standing because they are under my judgment for all time. Unlike you, oh, Israel, my chosen people. Oh, yes, I sent you into exile for a while, but I didn't forget you. I remembered you, and I brought you back into your land, and you have now rebuilt your city. You've strengthened the wall. You've established the temple, and hope is shining once more. The covenant is not broken.

The promise still stands. Messiah is coming, and you endure as my people because of my enduring faithfulness. When you compare the fate of Edom and Israel, of Esau and Jacob, can you not see my love for you in all of this?

Verse 5, your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say great is the Lord, the covenant keeping God beyond the border of Israel. You will one day see that I am the Lord God, that I am the sovereign one of the nations, that I reign over the affairs of men. Can you not even see it now that you are my chosen ones, that you endure because of my enduring love and faithfulness?

Can you not see my love for you in all of this? I chose you. I've preserved you. I've defended you. I've sustained you. I disciplined you, and I forgave you, and I've restored you, and even now I am bearing patiently with you, and I will be faithful to you because I'm not done with you.

I am sending Messiah to you, and I will make a new covenant with you, and I am preparing glory for you, and I'm just getting started because I love you. Won't you believe me? Won't you believe me? Because, friends, God is forever faithful to his chosen ones. Do you believe that? God is forever faithful to his chosen ones.

Oh, sometimes it's hard to see it. Friends, God's love for you is bigger than a cancer diagnosis. Do you believe that? God's love for you is greater than a job loss. Do you believe that? God's love for you is wider than a series of relational rejections. Do you believe that? That God's love for you is deeper than all the financial losses you will ever face.

Do you believe that? If you need proof that suffering in life can coexist with being loved by God, just look at Jesus. Just look at Jesus. There was never one more righteous, never one more holy, never one more loved by God, and yet he had a very difficult life. God's faithfulness in the life of Jesus, his love was displayed through crucifixion into glory. And your life may be full of crucifixions, and his love will be displayed as he brings you to glory. This is tough love, but there are tender mercies, you see.

So you and I can focus in these moments, when life gets hard, we can focus on all our disappointed dreams, all the things we hoped would be, like Israel did. And we will end up convincing ourselves that we are miserably unloved. We will falsely assume that if God loves us, everything in life should go our way.

But that's not reality. Jesus proves otherwise. But if instead, instead of focusing on all our disappointed dreams, if we focus on his graces that are with us all along the way, in the good times and the bad times, as his goodness and mercy is following us all the days of our lives, so that we might dwell in the house of the Lord forever more, that his graces are faithfully bearing us unto eternity, preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison in his redeeming love, even when life doesn't go our own way. It is worth it in the end, because through it all, we are getting more and more of our Jesus, of our God. See, we can dwell in life on the gaps or the graces. The gaps, everything that would make you question whether you're loved or the graces that are confirming his love for you.

If you dwell on the gaps, and there's plenty of them, you'll begin to doubt his love. But if you dwell on his graces, and they are abundantly there, if you will willingly distill them out, you will learn to trust his love for you. This is why we need God's word, God's promises, stories of his character and movement toward us, that he is for us, never against us. This is why we need to be in the word. We need to hear his voice reminding us of his grace and his love. It's why we need community. We need to be with God's people, because sometimes you're not strong enough to hold on to the graces of God, and you need brothers and sisters around you who will hold you and remind you of what's true when you can't believe it. We need the word.

We need God's people. It's where we get our courage. I recently rewatched Finding Nemo. You saw this coming, didn't you?

Yeah. I recently rewatched it with my kids. It's a fascinating story. In disobedience, Nemo is separated from his father, imprisoned, put into a fish tank where he lives a sub-fish life, cursed, if you will. He tries to get out. He can't save himself. He loses courage. Unbeknownst to him, his father is pursuing him in love, battling sharks and jellyfish, crossing his endless ocean of fear to reach his son. Nemo doesn't know that.

Then Nigel the Pelican, remember him? He flies in and he says, everyone's talking about it. This father who's crossing the ocean because he loves his son. When Nemo hears the good news of the love of his father who will never stop pursuing him in love that's coming for him, his son, his chosen one, Nemo finds the courage to live. Friends, that's a gospel story.

That's a gospel story. And in the fish tank of your suffering, in the miserable dehumanizing box that you live in, you can choose to focus on everything that's gone wrong in your story or you can choose to remember the love of your father who will never quit on you and that you are indeed loved more than you know. Remember, you are loved more than you know. There's a reason I say that so often. We need to remember because we tend to forget. There's a reason the Bible is always reminding us of the truth and calling us home. We need to remember because we're prone to doubt.

We need to remember because the gaps will come. We need to remember because the gospel is the best news we will ever hear and your father loves you and he's battled more than sharks and jellyfish. He took on sin and death and hell and he's coming for you. This is how we know what love is, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. 1 John 3, 16. You have so much greater reason to believe in the love of God than Israel did now that you're on this side of the cross. Look at Jesus. See his love.

Hear him say, I chose you. I died for you. I graced you.

I forgave you. I will preserve you and I will defend you and sustain you and I will restore you and I will bear patiently with you. I will be faithful when you are faithless and I am not done with you. I am coming back for you. I am preparing for you glory beyond all comparison. I am just getting started with you because I love you. Won't you believe it?

Won't you believe it? Friends, you are loved more than you know. Remember it. Let's pray. Father, help us to see our doubts as warning lights. When we recoil and pull back our hearts in self-protection, hedging our bets, withholding our affections and trust, it's a warning.

It's a dangerous thing. Father, help us to doubt our doubts. Help us to trust when we're scared.

Help us to open up even when we don't know what's going to happen. Father, we've learned to be pretty guarded in life because so many people have hurt us but you will never hurt us. You are faithful and true.

Your love endures to a thousand generations. When you set your affections upon us, you declare your intentions for all eternity and we are safe in your arms. Father, help us to give you our hearts to hold nothing back for all that we are is what you desire. It's what you deserve.

It's what you demand. So, Father, we give you ourselves. Help us to trust your love even when the gaps come. We cling to you in Jesus' matchless name.

Amen. On today's Moody Church Hour, we heard Pastor Philip Miller telling us about doubting God's love, taken from Malachi chapter 1. This has been the first in a four-part series on tough love and tender mercies. The book of Malachi is full of warnings. In chapter 1, the prophet calls the people of God back from the precipice of withholding themselves in worship.

Next time, how they did this in three ways. Make plans to listen. The Moody Church Hour is a listener-supported ministry.

We count on the ongoing financial support of listeners like you. Together, we share solid biblical teaching that transforms lives across America and around the world. You can call us at 1-800-215-5001.

That's 1-800-215-5001. Online, you'll find us at moodychurchhour.com. That's moodychurchhour.com. Or write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.